Murder six miles deep.
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Kindt
Art: Matt Kindt
Colors: Sharlene Kindt
Letters: Matt Kindt?
What They Say:
From New York Times best-selling MIND MGMT creator Matt Kindt comes an exciting new undersea sci-fi mystery.
Mia is a special investigator hired to uncover possible sabotage taking place at a deep-sea research station. What she finds is a mind-blowing crime scene filled with suspects with terrible secrets, strange deep-sea creatures, and an impending flood!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I should put it out right now that I am a sucker for stories set on or under the water. There was a time in my life when I would watch The Abyss Director’s Cut at least once a month, and my favorite Jules Verne book is 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, so I might be inclined to like Depth just because of its setting. Thankfully, while it does use the setting extremely well, this is an all-around excellent comic.
Mia’s father is the world’s premiere ocean explorer, and creator of USEAR: the Underwater Science Exploration and Research group. A tragedy occurs in USEAR’s research lab Dept. H, and Mia is brought in as a special investigator. Her job is to investigate a murder scene and determine if this was an act of passion or industrial sabotage.
The issue divides its time between Mia’s trip down to Dept. H and flashbacks explaining who she is and why she’s brought in as the investigator. Kindt does an excellent job of keeping the story moving while providing us with necessary exposition. While the purpose of this issue largely stands as setup for the rest of the story, it remains engaging and enjoyable.
A great deal of that stems from Matt Kindt’s art and Sharlene Kindt’s colors. Kindt’s style reminds me quite a bit of Jeff Lemire. It’s rough, and the character designs often ugly, but both display a real flair for pacing and visual storytelling. Perhaps the page that best exemplifies that is when Mia meets with her old flame, Alain. Their scene plays out over six side-by-side panels. They talk, they hug, and they give each other meaningful looks, separated by the hermetically-sealed panels. While that occurs in the panels, in the gutters we seem them together, holding each other, laughing, and kissing.
It’s a masterful way of relating their past to us, but it might have been confusing if not for Sharlene Kindt’s colors. The flashback scenes are shown in a washed-out blue, with the only other colors present being black and white. However, she colors the figures in the gutters in a warm amber, creating a sense of heat and passion and connection that’s absent in the blue, faded scene.
Both the art and the colors possess an unfinished quality (again, reminding me of Lemire), and this lack of polish helps create a rough, uncertain, even claustrophobic atmosphere that fits the setting and the story. Even if you aren’t a fan of sea stories, the level of artistry here in both the writing and art make this worth reading.
In Summary:
DeptH 1 is an excellent start to a new series. The basic setup—a locked-room murder mystery on a deep-sea exploration lab—immediately captures your attention, and the art, pacing, and setting maintains that attention throughout. This is good stuff, people, and well worth checking out. Dr. Josh gives this an….
Grade: A+
Age Rating: N/A
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: 20 April 2016
MSRP: $3.99
